The Poisoned Pawn Page 23

  “We can’t even know for sure that what Michael told Inspector Ramirez was true, given everything that happened to him down there. He’ll be free to leave the hospital as soon as they’re ready to discharge him. He’ll have to resign from the department, of course. I can’t have a man on the job who killed his partner.”

  O’Malley looked down at his rubber overshoes. Jones knew how disappointed he was. He treated his men like family. He’d always been fond of Mike.

  “You mean, he’ll get away scot-free? That doesn’t seem fair.”

  “Not completely. We’ll keep investigating. Meanwhile, when you get back to work, maybe you can get hold of the insurance company that carries our policies and make sure they get a copy of that confession.”

  “I can’t do that,” said Jones. “Privacy laws. But balance of probabilities, that’s all the insurance companies need to deny a payout. The same burden of proof as the criminal courts in Cuba. They’ll do their own investigation once they hear about all of this.”

  She looked at the reporters lined up along the sidewalk with their microphones, already broadcasting news of the arrests. “They’ll tie that money up for years.”

  “You know, Celia?” O’Malley smiled. “I’m starting to think Cuba is my kind of country.”

  June Kelly waved at O’Malley from the back seat of the police car. A little old grey-haired lady, thought Jones. Counting on charm, and her acting ability, to keep her out of the penitentiary. Irv Birenbaum or one of his associates would have her released within a day.

  FIFTY - THREE

  Charlie Pike pulled his truck in front of the Ottawa International Airport. Ricardo Ramirez stepped out, followed by the priest. Ramirez removed his parka and the other pieces of borrowed clothing and handed them to Pike.

  “Can you return these to Celia? And thank her for me?”

  “Sure,” said Charlie Pike. “Before you go, Rick, do you mind if I take a minute to talk to Rey Callendes in private?”

  “Of course not,” said Ramirez. He helped the handcuffed priest climb back inside the cab of the truck.

  Ramirez waited on the sidewalk, his carry-on bag beside him on the ground. He stuffed his hands into his coat pockets. But an amazing thing had happened in his two days in Canada. He no longer felt the cold.

  “Tell me something,” Charlie Pike said to Rey Callendes, turning sideways to face the priest. “You taught at a school in Northern Ontario in the 1970s. There were four boys there from the same family. One of them drowned. Do you remember their last name?”

  “I don’t remember too many of the children,” said Callendes. “After a while, they all looked the same. We had a lot of runaways in those schools. Sometimes they never made it all the way home.”

  “You might remember the oldest boy,” said Pike. “He says he was nine years old when you raped him. It was the same day his little brother drowned. Look, I don’t care what you did to him; he doesn’t have much time left. He’s dying from hepatitis. If I knew his name, I could try to find his brothers so he can see them before he goes.”

  The priest flinched. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He slid across the seat and pulled on the door handle.

  “It’s a chance for you to make things right,” said Pike. “He blamed himself his whole life for something that wasn’t his fault. He never went home after that happened. He couldn’t face his family. You could help give him back something that you took away from him. Something important.”

  The priest turned around and looked at Charlie Pike. Pike saw something pass through his eyes. A shadow. Too fleeting to read. But he hoped it was shame.

  “There were four boys from one family, come to think of it. And, yes, come to think of it, one of them drowned. I can’t remember the English names they were given. We tried to discourage them from using their Indian ones, you know. But I think his name was Manajiwin. An Ojibway word. I never knew what it meant.”

  “I do,” said Pike. His eyes prickled with tears. “It means ‘respect.’”

  FIFTY - FOUR

  The plane was in the air. Rey Callendes sipped from a glass of water. Ramirez had removed the priest’s handcuffs. These planes had only plastic forks and spoons, no knives. He doubted Callendes was a danger to him or any other adult, but he kept his eyes out for children.

  The priest smiled slightly, holding up his plastic water glass. “Are you sure it’s safe for me to drink this?” By the time they had reached the airport, the television screens throughout the terminal were showing footage of the arrest of Walter and June Kelly.

  “Yes, I think so,” said Ramirez. “Although I’d stay away from the coffee.”

  “You understand, Inspector Ramirez, that if you deliver me over to Cuban Intelligence, they’ll simply let me go. They wanted me to leave Cuba. I was trying to, remember? I would be in Rome already if the Canadian authorities hadn’t stopped me at the airport.”

  Ramirez nodded, slowly. “The Minister of the Interior called you when he found out Rodriguez Sanchez had died, didn’t he? You arranged to fly out the same day. I thought that it was a coincidence. I don’t like coincidences.”

  The old priest simply smiled. He looked out the window, holding his glass carefully. He tapped it with his index finger.

  Ramirez was starting to connect the dots. A pornography ring, by definition, involved others. Not just Rodriguez Sanchez and Nasim Rubinder, but dozens, maybe hundreds, even thousands, of men.

  The wonder of the internet: the instantaneous circulation of photographs of children being violated. The globalization of evil. Empires had destroyed the Tainos, had tried to destroy the Ojibway and the Cree. This one destroyed children.

  Ramirez had been sent to Canada to make sure Father Callendes came back to Cuba. That he came “home,” as the minister had said. The term implied that Rey Callendes, when he returned to Cuba, would be among friends.

  If the Canadian authorities had continued their investigation into the images on Rey Callendes’s computer, the distribution list for that pornography would almost certainly have led to men who preferred to be anonymous. Men powerful enough to approve a special travel authorization from Cuba to Canada in only three days, not the months usually required.

  Ramirez thought about it. The only way the minister could have known what was at risk if the Canadian investigation proceeded in that direction was if one of the addresses on that laptop was his. Or one of his superiors. Or perhaps both.

  Ramirez smiled. He sat back in his upholstered seat and pulled a cigar from his pocket. He rolled it around in his fingers. It was too bad the airlines had banned smoking, too.

  He was finally starting to grasp the big picture.

  FIFTY - FIVE

  It was Saturday morning. Inspector Ramirez sat in Hector Apiro’s office, enjoying a mug of his exquisite Cuban coffee.

  “You have no idea how much I missed all this, Hector.”

  “All of this?” Apiro laughed, waving his arm around the room, indicating the dilapidated furniture, the cracked windows, the piles of books, the papers stuffed everywhere.

  “The warmth of our conversations. The beauty of the ocean. My family. Even our bureaucracy.”

  Apiro inclined his head. “Perhaps some of your nostalgia is due to the investigation you became involved in.”

  Ramirez nodded. “Yes, the stories of child abuse broke my heart. My grandmother was wrong. She thought that only religion prompted good people to do evil things.”

  “Perhaps that’s because she had no money.”

  “You were completely right about appearances being misleading, Hector. Walter Kelly, from all accounts, was supposed to be a nice, quiet man. But he was ruthless. I’m still not convinced he didn’t kill his own daughter. I suppose we’ll never know for sure.”

  Apiro put down his mug and reached for a file on his desk. “Before I forget, that young detective on your squad left this for you. Detective Espinoza.”

  Ramirez flipped through Fernando Espino
za’s report. It was interesting, for a number of reasons. “He did well,” Ramirez said. “So the old cigar lady was the mother of a political dissident.”

  “Yes,” Apiro said. “Paulo Aranas. He was jailed three years ago for criticizing the government about the organ donation program. He had no idea that his mother was dead. He was quite distraught, as you can imagine. Despite her age, he said he always thought she would live forever.”

  “The fact he is in jail explains why no one filed a missing person report about her.”

  Apiro nodded. “That boy, Espinoza? He is very good, Ricardo. He managed to keep Rita Martinez alive for almost twenty minutes until I arrived. He’s young, but his instincts are impeccable. Did you know he had medical training?”

  “No, I didn’t. But I’m hardly surprised; so many do. And what of Señora Aranas?” asked Ramirez. “Have you had a chance to determine the cause of death?”

  The old woman had been waiting for him at the Havana airport. She now sat impatiently in the corner of Apiro’s office, crossing and uncrossing her legs. She stopped fidgeting and leaned forward, listening anxiously.

  “Yes, I got around to it last night, finally. So much for telling Maria I wouldn’t work nights. But then, she often works nights, too,” Apiro laughed. “I think Señora Aranas died from a chokehold, Ricardo. The hyoid bone, which elevates the larynx, was fractured.”

  “Chokeholds are supposed to be used to restrain someone, not kill them,” said Ramirez, as he considered this surprising information. “Most law enforcement officers and security agents are trained to use them to subdue suspects. The military, too.”

  “If one of them was responsible, that could explain why they tried to cover up the cause of death by using the knife. I’m quite sure it was intended to be a diversion.”

  “How long does it take to choke someone to death?”

  “At least a minute or two. She was probably unconscious within seconds. If the chokehold had been released, she would have recovered without any ill effects. But the fracture shows that the pressure was far more than what was needed to subdue her, if indeed it was needed at all, given her age.

  “The cause of death was asphyxia. The chokehold was the mechanism, not the cause, if that makes sense. Her carotid sinus may have been stimulated by the choking, causing bradycardia. But that’s unlikely, given the petechiae I found in her lungs. Those indicate that her heart continued beating for a minute or two longer. She actually died of a heart attack. When she was stabbed, her heart had already stopped pumping, which explains why there was so little blood around the wound and on her clothes.”

  Ramirez nodded, chewing his cigar thoughtfully. He assembled the pieces, the old woman’s messages, the clues he had ignored.

  Did you ever want something for someone else so badly that you were willing to risk your own future?

  The old woman had nodded in the exhibit room and pointed to her throat. She was trying to show him she’d been choked. Ramirez had misunderstood. And her deliberate refusal to communicate initially was probably her way of showing him how she’d been silenced.

  Her son, Paulo, was arrested because of his concern that the organ donation program favoured foreigners over Cubans, and his fear that his little daughter could die because of it. Angela Aranas wanted better medical care for her granddaughter too. It might have cost her her life.

  She had complained loudly to the wrong people, at a time when there were foreign journalists in Havana. A lot of money was at stake in that program; Apiro had explained just how much.

  Security forces knew who she was. She was dressed in white, this mother of a jailed dissident. Not because she was a witch, or a cigar lady, or even an initiate into Santería, but because she was a Dama de Blanco. One of the Ladies in White.

  Ramirez should have seen it: the way she’d paced behind the minister with her flower in her hand; the way she’d thrown it on the ground and stomped on it. She’d tried to show him what had happened, how security agents had reacted on International Human Rights Day.

  Mamita Angela had marched silently in protest, in support of her son, until someone grabbed her and choked her and dragged her away.

  What else had she tried to tell him?

  FIFTY - SIX

  “I meant to tell you, Hector, I had a detective from El Gabriel in my office before I left for Canada. Juan Tranquilino Latapier. He was smart, intuitive. A good investigator. And yet when I called there this morning, the station commander told me they had no such officer.”

  “But I met him,” Ramirez had said to the station commander. “He was working on a murder involving a little girl named Zoila.”

  “We have no such case,” the station commander said. “There has been no child murdered in El Gabriel for as long as I’ve been here, and that’s almost twenty years. And I’ve never even known a police officer with that name.”

  “Juan Tranquilino Latapier?” said Apiro. “Perhaps someone was teasing you, Ricardo. That’s a very famous name. But Latapier was no detective.”

  “You know him?”

  “I know of him.”

  “Who is he?”

  “You mean who was he. He was the first Afro-Cuban lawyer in all of Cuba. He represented three men who were executed for a child’s murder. But that was a long time ago. At least a century ago. In fact, this could be the month of the anniversary.”

  Apiro pulled a book from the shelves and turned to the index, then flipped through its pages. “Yes, as I thought. It was January 2, 1906.”

  “Really?” said Ramirez, drawing on his cigar. “Tell me more about his case.”

  “It involved the supposed murder of a toddler named Zoila Gallardes. When her body was discovered, her heart and intestines had been torn from her remains. Eduardo Varela Zequeira, a white reporter, asserted that she had been murdered by three brujos—Pablo and Juana Tabares, and Domingo Bocourt, a former slave. Residents began to organize as vigilantes. The mayor accused the men of being brujos and demanded Bocourt and the others be charged. There was widespread hysteria. It was a fascinating case, Ricardo. I reviewed it in my studies in forensic medicine. It is extremely easy to confuse the bites of an animal with the wounds made by a knife. In fact, when I was still in Moscow, there was such a case in Australia. A wild dingo carried off a child. The mother was wrongly convicted then, too, but the mistake was eventually discovered.”

  “You think an animal killed Zoila?”

  “Oh, yes, I am sure of it. The little girl’s death occurred at a time when jutias were still plentiful. You will recall that mongooses were brought to the island to control them. The mongoose travels in groups, like hyenas. It is vicious enough to kill a cobra. When they were introduced into the West Indies, they killed off all the small mammals. And when they had destroyed almost all the jutias here, they began hunting for other food. Zoila was playing in her family’s backyard. She had no chance against one mongoose, much less a group of them.”

  “Did Latapier argue this at court?”

  “No, no, no. Originally, Latapier tried to defend Bocourt by arguing that he was insane, that as a brujo he was not in possession of his senses. But he lost that argument. As I recall, as he learned more about brujería, he tried to present new evidence to reopen the convictions. His last argument was an allegation that the local mayor had tried to protect whoever had sexually abused the child, and that the death was linked to that of another little girl who was raped and murdered. A knife had been left behind, stuck in her heart. He argued this was done to cast blame on the brujos and away from those who were truly guilty. But the appeal was unsuccessful. His clients were garrotted. This was long before firing squads became popular.”

  “It’s interesting that the facts are so similar to the ones in our file.”

  “That’s probably the reason someone pretended to be Latapier. It sounds to me like someone was having fun with you. A rather sophisticated joke, at that. But he was an interesting man, Latapier.”

  Apiro read alou
d from the book: “‘He was a supporter of José Martí, deported in 1895 for revolutionary activities. He returned to Cuba during the armistice and obtained his doctorate in law. He was the object of extraordinary racism in his lifetime. One newspaper, for example, reported that his success demonstrated that, with proper encouragement, a black brain could function almost as well as a white one. He married a white woman, a Basque.’ Interesting: her last name was Aranas, too, according to this article. ‘His children bore her name, not his, in the Basque tradition.’ This says they had four children: a daughter and three sons.”

  “I remember reading about this case now,” said Ramirez, nodding slowly as he considered this information. That was why the name Zoila had been familiar. “Fernando Ortiz refers to it in his textbook. The one on racism.”

  “That’s correct,” said Apiro. “Ortiz sat in the courtroom, watching the court proceedings every day. He thought Latapier was brilliant. The trial and appeals gripped all of Cuba.”

  “Do you have a copy of Ortiz’s book, Hector?”

  “Of course. Over there. Help yourself.” Apiro pointed to a hardcover book resting on the buckled shelves.

  Ramirez pulled it down. He opened the cover tentatively, half expecting to conjure Juan Tranquilino Latapier from its pages. But Latapier had returned to his own time. A black-and-white photograph confirmed that the man Ramirez had met was not a police detective but a lawyer who’d been dead more than fifty years.

  Just over a century had passed, Ramirez realized, since Juan Latapier had stood before the Supreme Court of Cuba, presenting his new evidence. It was an argument he was destined to lose, but one that would change the country.

  Because an academic named Fernando Ortiz was watching, mesmerized, taking notes of Latapier’s impassioned appeal. Notes he would use to write a book that would influence Castro and forever change Cuba.